You must, to be successful, have both. The world pays best those who push. Hundreds of inventors and artists fail because they do not cultivate the science of pushing themselves before the world.
You can learn the science of pushing by yourself. You will acquire it by seeing yourself in mind or imagination as asserting yourself courageously, fairly, honestly, before others, and making yourself agreeable to all. The more you do this in imagination, the more will you feel like doing it in reality. What you do in thought is a reality. What you live most in thought, you make a reality. You will find, after a time of such mental exercise, that you have more nerve, more courage, more tact, more address, more desire to mingle with all sorts of people, to take hold of the world, and make it give you what rightfully belongs to you.
Poverty comes largely of shrinking away from people, and fear of assuming responsibilities.
See yourself always in imagination as diffident, bashful, shrinking, and by the same law you make yourself so. Reverse this process of silent mental treatment. See yourself courageous. You are always growing up to your highest ideal of yourself, and you reconstruct yourself by this process of silent thought. You cannot succeed and make money if you remain in a corner. You cannot do business with the world entirely by letter or by proxy. You must to an extent show yourself to others. When your spirit carries your body before another person, it carries the instrument for enabling your spirit to put out its fullest volume of thought-power on that person.
Thought being substance or force, you can pile up in your mind volumes of that force for or against you. To think of nothing but difficulties and possible troubles in business, is to set your mind as the magnet to attract only difficulties, first in thought, next in substance. This becomes with many a fixed habit hard to get rid of.
You have nothing whatever to do with a difficulty but to set your mind as a magnet in the direction for receiving force, ideas, and plans for overcoming that difficulty. If you have trouble with any person, and are always thinking of his injustice toward you, in the mood of anger or complaint, you are in thought-element making over again and again the wrangle or battle. You can use up in growling, scolding, complaining, and grumbling, be it thought out silently, or spoken to others, the same force or thought which would make a plan to get rid of the thing scolded or grumbled at. It is on precisely the same principle as the strength with which the mason builds his wall can be used in tearing it down, or in flinging about bricks at random. If you will give your body all the rest it needs, your mental force will work far and near more powerfully for you. Your plans will be deeper, and, when carried out, more productive of results. If the body is always fagged-out, much of the force of that spirit must be used-up in keeping its hold on the body,—in other words, keeping it alive. It matters not whether you tire yourself out voluntarily, or are obliged to do so to get a living. The result is the same.
If you want more time in which so to rest, desire and demand it persistently. An opportunity will then at length come to you by which you can earn enough for your present support without working the body at one employment so many hours daily. It will come by that mysterious law and attractive force which moves all things to all people according to their strongest desires and the persistency of such desire.
You can, through this same power (persistent desire), bring to you an evil as quickly as a good. The thing you are now strongly desiring may turn out an evil. If you desire or demand wisdom to know what will do you the most lasting good, you will, by the same law, bring to you the capacity to see what is really the best for you. Desire persistently a “clear head,” and a clear head will come to you. When your opportunity comes, granting you four or five more hours daily of leisure, do not pile on yourself any extra effort for the sake of the few dollars you may get by it. This opportunity may be your first step out into a newer life. Give yourself leisure. Don’t be afraid of enjoying yourself. Your mind will then breed plans for future success; and as such plans come to you, you will be inspired to act them out with your body.
A steady situation and good wages for life in any calling is not the road to any permanent or growing success. You are then but a screw in the great business machine, and, when worn-out, will be mercilessly replaced by the newer screw. If in skill you are in your business at the top, and as to wages near the bottom, it is because, while skilled in your trade, you are not so in getting your just reward for that skill. You must aspire to manage a business founded on your skill. You must not be content to be managed by others who, taking advantage of your skill, get your industry and article before the public, and, with that, three-fourths of the profits. You must use this your power of thought, to get it and yourself before the public.
You must, to gain the greatest success, manage a business, or a department of a business, and be its sole governor without interference or hinderance from another. Responsibility alone can bring out your fullest power and its attendant happiness.
Otherwise you will, as a mere employee, be fettered by an employer’s demands, or by conditions made by others in which you will be obliged to work. You will see your best ideas imperfectly carried out, because you cannot fully control their carrying out yourself.
VI.
HOW TO KEEP YOUR STRENGTH.
Thoughts are Things.
A principal means for holding and increasing both physical and mental strength lies in the training of the mind and body to do but one thing at a time; in other words, to put all the thought necessary for the performance of any act in that act, and to put aside all other thought whatever save what belongs to that act.
The body is but the machine used by the mind. If it be weak, the power of our thought may be largely used and almost uselessly expended in resisting its weakness. The mind is then the workman endeavoring to carry out his design with an imperfect tool. Eventually, this defective tool may derange and destroy entirely the workman’s power.
Strength of mind and body is the corner-stone of all enjoyment and success. The weak body enjoys little or nothing. Our bodies are reservoirs of force. Eating and sleeping are means for filling up with that force; in other words, for filling up with thought. When so filled up we enjoy our walk, our business, our effort of any kind. What is most desirable for all to know is, how to retain the most of that force during our waking hours and if possible to increase it; because this force has a commercial value in dollars and cents. The weak and exhausted body is neither the body for “business” or pleasure, and all business is best done when it is a pleasure to do it.
An old system of philosophy says, “What thou doest, that do with all thy might.”
Not the spasmodic, fleeting might of fury or anger. That is not might at all. That is waste of strength. It implies that every act of our lives, from the tying of a shoe-string, the forming of a letter, or the sharpening of a pencil, should be done with the might of method, precision, exactness, care; in brief, the might of concentration. When a boy, I was doing my first day’s shovelling in the California gold-diggings. An old miner said to me, “Young man, you make too hard work of shovelling: you want to put more mind in that shovel.”
Pondering over this remark, I found that shovelling dirt needed co-operation of mind with muscle,—mind to give direction to muscle; mind to place the shovel’s point where it should scoop up most dirt with least outlay of strength; mind to give direction to the dirt as thrown from the shovel; and infinitesimal portions of mind, so to speak, in the movement of every muscle brought into play while shovelling. I found that the more thought I put in the shovel the better could I shovel: the less like work it became, the more like play it became, and the longer my strength for shovelling lasted. I found when my thought drifted on other things (no matter what), that soon the less strength
